The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. Due to the now ubiquitous nature of electronic communication devices, people of all ages and education levels are utilizing electronic devices to communicate with other individuals or contacts, receive services and/or share information, media and other content. One area in which there is a demand to increase ease of information transfer relates to the delivery of services to a user of a mobile terminal. The services may be in the form of a particular media or communication application desired by the user, such as a music player, a game player, an electronic book, short messages, email, content sharing, etc. The services may also be in the form of interactive applications in which the user may respond to a network device in order to perform a task or achieve a goal. The services may be provided from a network server or other network device, or even from the mobile terminal such as, for example, a mobile telephone, a mobile television, a mobile gaming system, etc.
In some situations, mobile terminals may enhance the interaction that users have with their environment. Numerous use cases have developed around the concept of utilizing mobile terminals to enhance user interaction with their local area such as, for example, virtual tour guides and other mixed reality applications. Mixed reality involves the merging of real and virtual worlds. In some cases, mixed reality involves mixing real world image data with virtual objects in order to produce environments and visualizations in which physical and digital objects co-exist and potentially also interact in real time. Mixed reality includes augmented reality, which uses digital imagery to augment or add to real world imagery, and virtual reality, which simulates real world environments using computer simulation.
Augmented reality is a fast growing area, which is currently available on many mobile platforms (e.g., Symbian™, Android™, iPhone™, Windows Mobile™). The concept of augmented reality is to overlay graphics or information on a live video stream or a still image from a camera in a communication device. The graphics/information may be of any kind. In augmented reality graphics/information about the environment and objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of a view of the real world.
A common use of augmented reality is to overlay points of interests (POI) on a video stream or still image. These POIs may be static information, like landmarks, for example or any information that may be geo-coded (e.g., contains a coordinate). An example of the use of augmented reality can be seen in FIG. 1, where information provided by Wikipedia™ and tweets provided by Twitter™ are overlaid on a camera view of a communication device.
When a consumer presses one of the Wikipedia™ icons for example, the user may be presented with more information about an article associated with the selected icon. As an example, augmented reality may be used by consumers when they are in new places, and want to obtain information about things they see. By standing in front of a tourist attraction and pointing a camera at the attraction, the consumer can get information about the attraction.
From consumer studies related to augmented reality, it has become clear, that one of the most important features for the consumers using an augmented reality browser is that consumers want to be able to select the content that should be shown on the camera view of a device.
One problem with allowing consumers to be able to select the content that should be shown on the camera view is that the consumer might enable an information layer, which does not have any information available for the consumer's current location. It might be that the information layer enabled by the consumer has appropriate information for the consumer's normal surrounding and when the consumer travels to another location, for example during a holiday or for work, the enabled information layer may not be suitable. For instance, the information layer may not have any or very little information available for the consumer to see.
Such a scenario may put the consumer in a situation where the augmented reality browser does not provide any value to the consumer, since the browser would simply be a camera view. An example of this scenario is shown in FIG. 2. In the example of FIG. 2, the consumer may be interested in pictures. As such, a consumer may enable an information layer on a communication device which provides pictures to an augmented reality application that may be shown in the camera view of the communication device. In the example of FIG. 2, the consumer has enabled the flickr.com information layer via the communication device. Unfortunately, there are very little pictures/information provided from flickr.com in the current location of the consumer. As shown in FIG. 2, the consumer can only see one icon 3 associated with information (e.g., pictures) provided from flickr.com in the camera view.
Currently, the problem described above associated with the consumer enabling an information layer which does not have any information available for the consumer's current location has typically been solved, by allowing the consumer to utilize the communication device to manually choose between known information layers provided by an augmented reality application. In this regard, the consumer typically has to go through a trial-and-error phase by enabling an information layer, then checking to determine if the information layer has any information for the consumer's current location. If the information layer does not have any information for the consumer's current location, the consumer typically has to try another information layer, so on and so forth, until the augmented reality browser is able to provide the level of information that the consumer wants.
This process may be tedious to the consumer and may be time consuming if there are many information layers available for the consumer's location. In situations in which the problem of the lack of information provided by an enabled information layer may arise, it may be most important for the consumer to get relevant information as quick as possible, not spending 10 or 30 minutes trying to find useful information. As such, the trial and error approach may be burdensome to consumers and may result in consumer dissatisfaction.
In view of the foregoing drawbacks, it may be desirable to provide an alternative mechanism by which to provide information layers to users of communication devices.